Lots of love from CDW 2017

9th June 2017

By Collette Black

Clerkenwell Design Week is always something we look forward to and it’s so exciting when you find out people are looking forward to seeing you too. We’ve had loads of amazing blogs and magazines writing about our beautiful new showroom, I heard so many people saying “this is the pink and green kitchen I’ve seen everywhere!”

It’s true, as soon as we sent the pictures out to our contacts, the features came flooding in. Living etc. said it’s “well worth noseying around” whilst EKBB encouraged their readers to visit and “be inspired”. The reception from bloggers all over the world has been pretty incredible too. Mad about the House featured it as one of her ’10 Beautiful Rooms’, Desire to Inspire said it was the kitchen of her dreams, US blogger Simply Grove featured it as her Hot Links Friday, another of our favourite stateside bloggers SF Girl by Bay said she wishes she could visit, top interiors blogger Design Sponge loved it so much she wanted to interview our Creative Director, Helen and it’s even been featured on Vogue’s Brazilian Home magazine ‘Casa Vogue‘ as their ‘Decor of the day’.

In the run up to the show, excitement started to build as to what we were going to do on our stand and in our new townhouse above the showroom. The Evening Standard listed us as one of their ‘must-see shows’ and brilliant British designers ‘2 Lovely Gays’ chose our showroom as number 1 on their list of 10 things to see in the Metro. Online magazine My Warehouse Home also listed us in their 5 must-see designers and local London blogger Creative Clerkenwell included us in her popular newsletter as one of her top picks for the week.

Despite all the build up we definitely had first day nerves, it’s that feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach, like the idea of no-one showing up to your birthday party. Paul, Helen, Robin, Ben and Zoe had all been up since 7 cleaning and prepping the last bits. The candles were lit, the soft smell of incense began to fill the rooms, the clouds parted and the sunshine started to trickle through our beautiful sash windows, we were ready. We hoped it’d be busy or that we’d at least get a steady flow through the door, but we were absolutely blown away by the number of people who came to visit us. Journalists and editors from all the top magazines, our favourite bloggers, lots of lovely followers and people who had come to the show just to see us!

During the festival there was so much love on social media! It’s so cool to instantly see how something has gone down, magazines work months in advance and blogs will take at least a few days, if not weeks, but as soon as we opened our doors we were flooded with notifications, reviews and beautiful pictures. Over the three days we saw over 120 people post pictures of the townhouse or our stand on Instagram and loads more people featuring us in their story!!

Twitter was going a bit crazy too. Top journalist Katrina Burroughs even said we were her Clerkenwell Design Week highlight! We always read Katrina’s column in The Sunday Times, so for her to choose our new townhouse as her favourite thing was just the most amazing feeling! All of those hours and hours of hard work, planning, painting, styling and gardening in the pouring rain all seem so worth it.

And it wasn’t just Katrina, Homes and Gardens also featured the townhouse in an Instagram rundown of what to see at the show and award-winning blogger Little Big Bell posted our showroom as one of her favourite things she saw!

In the following week blogs started to pop up all over the internet raving about our dreamy townhouse and urban rustic Sebastian Cox Kitchen. Design Soda called our new show house ‘the height of English artisan luxury in kitchen design’ whist Hello Peagreen said it was one of her favourite spaces and that ‘it was styled impeccably and was immediately able to convey what it should be like to live with [deVOL] products.’…Could we ask for more?!

It was a hectic three days, and a good few weeks beforehand, but one filled with so many memories. When you see all of this love, all the stress and achy feet fade away and you end up just feeling super proud of the incredible team effort and all deVOL has achieved. Chuffed doesn’t even come close, so thank you so much to everyone who came to see us and to all those who posted or wrote about us. We really were completely bowled over by your wonderful support and hope to see you all again next year!

– You can find our new showroom at 36 St. John’s Square, Clerkenwell, London EC1V 4JJ.